The process of creative a Bizarre Character

And she's completely finished! This project was my first time fully completing a product from a full concept to a sculpt. I've learned a lot during this project, and it's reaffirmed that I'd like to perform this kind of job in employment.

Once all the textures were in engine, came the particle effects. I gave them a base and a "room" in which to render them, creating a little scene. When it came to lighting, I had to redo my cel shade, as it was effecting how lighting was working in the scene. The method I used instead posterizes, which actually looks closer to the cel shade in Eyes of Heaven, so even though it's not how I initially wanted it to look, I'm still happy. I gave my scene some atmospheric lighting too, trying to create quite sharp highlights and a purple hue.

The texturing process has been an arduous one. The bake tests revealed many problems that had to be worked around. I tried my reworked pipeline on just her head, as was happy with the result. Once every thing was fixed, actually texturing wasn't that difficult. I used substance for baking, and for applying base colours. I then used mudbox to add the details, such as the line work, cross hatch and highlights and shadow. I used my unreal file, to figure out which lines were picked up by the shader, and what needed to be drawn on. I textured the stand and the User in seperate mudbox files, importing the textures from substance.

This week was all about refining the sculpt. I had to make sure I was satisfied, so I could begin to unwrap. I chose to unwrap in 3DS Max. Once I has unwrapped each object, I did individual bake tests in Substance painter. Of course, not everything worked straight away, so this helped me identify issues with the bake. The test bake proved that there was some issues with some of my high poly. I had to redo some of the high poly sculpts, simply using the unwrapped lower poly version. Although this was time consuming, I feel this was perhaps for the  best, as they ended up looking better the second time around. During this time I also set up the shaders within my unreal file, creating a cel shader, toon shader and toon outline. Once these were set up, I imported the high poly, so I could see how these shades would interact. I initially only had the toonline shader, but once I had imported the low poly with the normal maps. I realised this one wasn't picking up the d

This week was about making as much progress on each character's high poly as I could. I spent many hours just ensuring I definitely was very happy with the look of the high poly. I felt it was very effective untextured, I just hope I can maintain the look when I texture it. I also did an initial texture test, just using mudbox's painter tools. This clearly wasn't looking quite right, and I'd have to rethink my texture pipeline. I realised it was important to have my shaders set up, so I could see how it was going to look in engine, as well as being able to visualise what detail was picked up by the shader and what was necessary to draw on.

Once I had the bash mesh of the stand user, I began to sculpt the high poly in mud box. Once I had made a good deal or progress with the stand user, I realised I had enough time to do full models of each character. I started the stand by taking the arms and torso from the human base mesh, and head base mesh from mudbox, taking it apart and back together again, as I had done with the stand user. I then began to work on each individual asset.  The Stand user was pretty much ready to just work on the high poly, as her pose and base geometry was as I wanted it to be.  I did some experiments within 3DS Max in order to get the right shape of the stand's cloth.

Modelling really began this week, and I finally have a base to start sculpting with. I split the user into her legs, feet, arms, body and head. I then changed her base geometry in 3DS Max, and then imported these all back into Mudbox. Along with all the meshes that were made in 3DS Max, such as the trouser buckles and hair. And began to sculpt the details.

Whilst going through this project, I have also had expo tees in mind. For this I had to create a brochure image. This deadline forced to me to finish my posed concept! (Brochure Image) This also helped my design my final render. The smoke, stand fire and "menacing" symbols would have to be particle effects, or added in afterward. This forced me to really consider how I was going to render my project. I decided that a video turn around perhaps wasn't the best idea, and that a render in Unreal, would be better. This would give me the opportunity to create effects, that weren't going to be added in a video editor, and in the long term would help me develop my in engine skills. I also began to work on the actual model it's self, changing the proportions of the human base mesh in mudbox.

This was the week for our progress reviews. This intermittent deadline acted as a bit of a push for me to get as much work done as I could. I finished my full colour turn around of my stand user and stand I also created a 3D scultping test, using the head base mesh from mudbox. Unfortunatley, she's currently looking a bit more cartoon than Araki style anime.

I had a pretty clear design in mind for my stand user, based off of the initial style practice I had done. At the time of designing her, I felt it was also important to keep her pose in mind. Poses are a key feature in JJBA. Main characters each have a unique pose, amplifying their character. I created some thumbnails of possible poses. I wanted my character to be strong, sassy and sarcastic. With strength being her main attribute.  I even created 3D pose tests, to see how well they would translate to 3D. I asked for feedback from my peers, and they all chose the top right. Whilst this pose isn't as dynamic as the others, this meant I would have to exaggerate her proportions more, and give her a less anatomically correct bend in her knees and feet.  I felt her outfit required a lot of thought, as Araki is heavily fashion inspired. I choose to go with the Visual Kei style, as this was Japan's response to the 80's goth movement, of which I has chose t

I broke the stand down into separate components, the head, legs, clothes, and torso. I initially wanted to go with a bird like figure, with avian legs. I briefly designed some clothing, but decided this wasn't quite the look I wanted to achieve, as it looked more human like than robotic, like a stand. I started with the head, as I felt this was the most important element, mainly giving the stand it's identity. I chose to go with the feminine, nurse like look. I felt the mix of a nurse, and plague doctor captured "The Cure", but I also feel there's a lack of female coded stands, and it has an almost ambiguous androgynous look to it, as it isn't overtly feminine. I then drew a range of torsos. I felt this part of the design was more about trying to create something that is consistently "stand-like".  I asked people for feedback on which design to chose, and surprisingly most of those I asked said bottom left. The design I felt was